


Hellbound

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Birthday Party, F/M, Meg Masters Lives, Memories, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 19:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11743803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: One of the disadvantages of being in a relationship with an angel, Meg discovered, is that she's dreaming again. Except they're not exactly dreams, not at all...





	Hellbound

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my friend Mel. Happy birthday, dear!

Demons weren’t supposed to dream.

Most of them didn’t notice when they stopped or didn’t care to, but Meg did. She had always wondered why that was, because she was ancient and she’d had time to wonder about these things. Azazel had, too. He’d theorized it was due to the disconnection between what their souls had become and their past human selves. Dreams were, at least in part, made of memories, and demons had none. But then, Meg had asked, they remembered Hell and its exquisite tortures. Shouldn’t they be able to dream about that, even if it were just nightmares?

Azazel had patted her in the head with pride. She’d brought up a valid point and he was always glad to see he had chosen such a smart girl as his daughter and right hand. But he didn’t answer Meg question, perhaps because he didn’t want to admit he didn’t know it.

And again, he hadn’t been around when Lucifer had risen (that was a shame, Meg thought. Even if it ultimately had failed spectacularly thanks to the meddling of the Winchesters, she believed her father would’ve liked to see the fruit of his arduous labor after all). All demons had begun dreaming again. There was no explanation for that either, except the fact that Lucifer was walking the earth. The brightest, the most powerful archangel of all, their father and creator. His presence had shed light on and stirred some of the demons’ memories and they dreamed again. Most of them shuddered at the very idea of it, most of them hated to look back on their past and found out there had been some unpleasantness so ugly it had made them choose Hell after all.

Meg didn’t. Her dreams were mostly pleasant, strangely enough. She remembered her sisters (she thought they were her sisters, at least), their little faces looking up at them, their colorful tunics soaking wet and clinging to their bodies after they had gone for a swim in the river, running on the green fields where the flowers had barely began growing. Their voices singing in an ancient language she almost understood, their laughter like chimes agitated by the wind.

They were pleasant dreams. She remembered vague sensations of it when she woke up, but they only strengthened her resolution to find out. If she went to heaven, if she travelled through enough memories of rivers and summer days, would she eventually find those other girls with bright eyes she saw in her dreams? Will she remembered her name and the reason she went Hell instead of resting with them under the eternal light?

The Winchesters locked Lucifer up in the Cage before she could find out, and with him, her possibilities of ever finding out. Meg forgot about it for the longest time.

Until she started dreaming again.

There had to be a connection, she thought. Something angels did that caused demons to remember. To dream.

The older girl was weaving flowers in her hair. Meg knew she was her sister, but she didn’t know her name. She knew the child she was carrying on her back was the girl’s firstborn and Meg’s nephew and he was only a few days old, so he didn’t have a name yet.

“You look very beautiful, Pearl,” the girl said. She didn’t call her Pearl, but somehow Meg knew that was what she meant. “All the boys will be fighting over you.”

“You’ve already married and given father an heir,” Meg protested. “Why must I do the same thing?”

“Don’t be silly,” her sister laughed. “Our clan needs all the children we can have and we need to raise them to become big warriors. Otherwise, how will we repel the invaders that come sailing from the south?”

Meg didn’t care for the invaders. They were a nebulous, faraway threat that meant nothing to her and with the carelessness of youth, she didn’t think they would ever arrive to their little corner of the world. She didn’t know why they couldn’t go swimming in the river anymore and why her sister had to accept the proposal of some warrior that doubled her age and go away to have his children.

But before she could protest about any of those things, her sister turned her around and gave her an approving glance over.

“Mom would’ve been proud.” She moved closer and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Happy birthday, little sister.”

Meg woke up with a start.

“What did you dream?”

Castiel’s blue eyes were set on her face, his hair messy and pointing in every direction. His voice always sounded rougher in the mornings. She didn’t know what that was about, since she knew he never slept. He only watched her sleep, like the creep he was.

“It was my birthday,” Meg told him.

Demons didn’t sleep as a general rule, but sometimes Castiel managed to exhaust her enough that she needed to. Dean complained about the noises they made and how the bunker’s walls weren’t thick enough for them to go about their businesses privately, but they tended to ignore him. Castiel gave him a token apology and then they went at it again the second the hunter turned his back on them.

Demons also didn’t dream, Meg was finding out, unless there was angel by their side when they were resting. And her dreams were longer and more vivid than when Lucifer walked the earth, perhaps because all of this angel’s concentration was focused on her all the time. And perhaps because when she mentioned it to him that she was having dreams she thought were memories, he seemed extremely interested in hearing all about them.

“Why do you even care who I was before?” Meg had asked when he kept interrogating her about those dreams. “Don’t you think you’ve got your hands full with who I am right now?”

She had moved closer to him and deliberately moved his hand to her ass. Castiel had laughed and placed a kiss on her temple.

“Perhaps,” he’d admitted. “I guess I’m just curious.”

“Why?” Meg rolled her eyes and turned her back on him. “Do you think I did something worse being human than what I’ve done as a demon? Do you think there’s something in my past that would make you change your opinion of me?”

She asked the question as if she truly didn’t care for the answer, but something in her voice must have given her away, because Castiel grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her behind a stack, where the Winchesters wouldn’t see them if they happened to walk into the library at that precise moment.

“Nothing will make me change my opinion of you,” he murmured in that deep voice that was better suited for grunt in Meg’s ear. “Or my feelings.”

“Shut up, you unbearable sap,” she protested.

But she put her arms around his neck and she kissed him. Because in the end, she always gave in to him. Just like she had given in and started telling him about the dream she had. At first they were the same as when Lucifer had just emerged: dreams of her and three other girls by the river. They were supposed to be washing their clothes, but it was summer and it was hot that pushing each other into the water and swimming seemed like a much better use of their time. They all had reddish brown hair and golden eyes and spoke a musical language filled with inflexions Meg could never reproduce quite right when she woke up.

Castiel identified it as an ancient Celtic dialect from Meg’s poor waking imitation of it.

“The river you see in your dream, your family… you don’t remember their names?”

“Guess it never comes up.” Meg shrugged. “It’s weird. When I’m sleeping, I know that I know those things. But when I wake… all gone.”

“Maybe it’s just a matter of keep exploring, then.”

“Maybe,” Meg replied, cautious.

The dreams started changing after a while.

First it was just the snippet of that day in the river. But then they began developing a narrative of sorts. Their bodies became curvier and she noticed curious boys hidden in the bushes watching their games. Then the older sister disappeared only to return with a swollen belly and later carrying a small child. Last night’s dream had been the first one that was set in their home instead of their spot by the river.

“It was the first day of autumn and my birthday. She was dressing me up because there was people coming over to see me. Suitors and their parents,” Meg explained to Castiel as they got dressed in their room in the bunker, miles and centuries away from that day. “I was turning sixteen, I think.”

“That’s interesting.”

“That I was gonna be given away to some random guy as a child bride?”

“That you remember your birthday’s date with such clarity,” Castiel replied, with a smile curving up his lips. “The first day of spring. That’s in about a month.”

“Oh, no.” Meg shook her head. “Don’t be getting any ideas, angel. Remember Valentine’s Day? You want a repeat of that?”

Castiel’s smirk didn’t disappear. He simply kept buttoning up his shirt as if Meg had said nothing at all.

“I mean it!” she warned him. She walked around him and planted herself in front of him with her hands on her hips. It was hard to look menacing when she was a head shorter than him and she was wearing only her jeans and her bra, but she thought she managed. “Clarence, don’t even think about it.”

“I’m not thinking about anything,” he said, with a slight shrug. He was such a transparent liar, but Meg couldn’t really protest when he put a hand on her cheek and leaned to kiss her.

“It’s not fair,” she groaned. “I’ll never get a chance to get revenge if do anything. I mean, were you even born?”

“Not exactly. I was sung into existence on the fourth day.”

“The fourth day of what?”

“Everything,” Castiel said, with a shrug.

Meg looked at him with a crooked eyebrow and burst into laughter. She had a sense of having been around for a long time, but compared to Castiel, she had been roaming the earth for all of ten minutes.

“I was part of one of the youngest legions,” Castiel groaned, obviously annoyed at the fact Meg was laughing at his face. “There were only two more afterwards.”

“You keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better,” Meg giggled. “Won’t change the fact you’re ancient.”

Castiel grabbed her by the waist and pinned her against the wall. He did that when she irritated him and wanted to stop arguing with her. Meg hooked a leg around his and grinned devilishly at him.

“You’re still looking good, though.”

“Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself,” he replied.

He leaned over to kiss her again.

There was a knock on the door.

“Cas? You ready? We gotta go.”

Both Meg and Castiel groaned loudly at Dean’s words.

“Can you just ignore him?”

“Wish it was that easy,” Castiel said with a sigh. He moved away and picked up his coat, putting it on like a warrior putting on its armors before going out to fight the people coming to claim their land…

What an oddly specific image. Meg blinked and shook her head to chase that image away. However, she didn’t stop herself from placing a hand on his forearm and looking up at him. Castiel turned to her, almost as if he was surprised by that gesture.

“You sure you don’t need more hands on the deck?” she asked.

“We’ll have more than enough help,” Castiel guaranteed her. “You have to stay here. You’re still weak and we don’t know what Amara could do.”

“Yeah. Talk about a supreme bitch,” Meg groaned.

She managed to give him one last quick kiss before letting him open their room’s door. She followed him to the stairs outside and forced a smile when he looked over his shoulder and waved at her.

She didn’t like this. She didn’t like that he was running headfirst into danger, again, because the Winchesters asked him to, again. She didn’t like that she had no option but to let him. She didn’t like knowing she wasn’t going with him to protect him

She didn’t like this déjà vu sensation at all.

She studied some books to get it out of her head. She read about ancient Celtic gods and goddesses and spent a good deal of time staring at an illustration of Morrigan, with her tunic soaked in red blood, a crow in one arm and a spear in the other. Morrigan, the goddess of battle.

“Did I pray to you?” Meg asked the illustration.

Of course, she obtained no answer.

The hours dragged and she could do nothing but pace the bunker over and over, opening the books and closing them again. She was thinking now it had been a mistake not to ask these idiots how long she was supposed to wait before she got worried. They had told her the war room would give a warning in the event of something catastrophic happening, but what if nothing happened for a day? Two or three? What if she knew nothing of them for a week? Was she supposed to just stay there all that time?

She ran her hands though the scars still in her skin, the scars that held back the power that otherwise would’ve been thrumming in her veins. Crowley had designed the spell so that she remained bound to that body and powerless. She could still perform some tricks, but she was forced to heal the old-fashioned way.

And stay behind when the action was happening elsewhere.

She thought her mind was raging far too much for her to get distracted, but several junk food programs later, her mind started to wonder off and her eyelids became heavy. Maybe that was for the best. She wouldn’t know how much time had passed if she fell asleep…

All the single boys in the village were there. The widowers too. Some of them were as old as her father, but it didn’t matter at all. It was considered impolite not to at least make an offer for her hand before she could pick one.

Her eyes scanned the crowd until they found what she was looking for. His hair was sand blond and he had eyes blue as the sky. She had seen him sometimes looking at her from the bushes and she liked the way her knees tremble and her body shudder when his eyes meet her. He had come there even though he was a first son and a young warrior, which meant he could pick any girl in the village he liked. But he had come to her coming-of-age party. Which meant maybe he was interested in her.

She elbow her way through the crowd, trying to reach him, to talk to him… before the piercing scream came before she could reach him.

“They’re coming! The southerners! They killed the sentinels! They’re burning the walls!”

Panic ensued. The men ran for their weapons and the women gathered their children as fast as they could. Her sister grabbed her arm.

“Get the others!” she screamed at her. “We have to evacuate!”

She found her younger sisters hugging each other, paralyzed by fear. She had to yell at them and half push them half drag them for them to move. She had no idea where they were going, where they could go, because if the attackers had come from the river and they were burning the wall, how could they…?

But it didn’t matter. They had to be out of the town by the time the battle started. Everyone had heard the stories of what happened to women that were taken hostages by the enemy.

The chaos in the street was the same or worse as it had been in their house. The neighbors were running, some of them trying to save their animals or riches, the children screamed, scared. All the warriors ran out of their houses, with their axes and their swords, their armors half adjusted as they ran towards the column of smoke raising in the east.

The east, towards the woods.

That wasn’t right. If the invaders had come from the West River, then why…?

“Pearl!”

Her sister grabbed her by the arm and they looked around, a moment of calm in the mayhem, as they tried to decide which way to go. One of the neighbors, a man with a beard who was too old to fight but still held a spear up, spotted them.

“To the pier, young ladies! The priests are loading everyone up in the boats!”

“Thank you, sir,” her sister said, rocking the baby to calm it down. Though his crying was barely audible over the rest of the clattering and screaming that seemed to come from everywhere.

She hanged unto her sister’s tunic with one hand and held the youngest one by the wrist with the other. They had to push and duck the people running everywhere. They almost got separated in the crowd that tried to run for the piers, almost running over each other as they desperately tried to reach for the boats.

“It’s not right,” she muttered under her breath.

“What is it, Pearl?” her sister asked.

Before she could explain, the trap closed its teeth and they were all caught in it.

The boat that came sailing down over the West River’s waters was bigger than any Pearl had ever seen. It’s sails were swollen by the breeze and sported the feared cross of the southerners, a symbol of the cruel god that ordered them to kill those who didn’t adored him. No one had time to run for cover before the first flaming arrow drew an arc in the air and sunk with a terrible thump on the pier. Followed by another and another…

The flames engulfed everything in a matter of seconds. Pearl caught a glimpse of the priestess raising her hands, praying to Morrigan for her protection right before she collapsed backwards, the feathered tip of an arrow sticking out of her chest. The boat stopped, but the sisters didn’t stay to watch the men in padded armors that jumped from it. They turned tail and ran, their battle cries ringing in their ears.

It had been a simple but effective trap. While all the men ran to defend the burning east wall, the Southerners had attacked its most vulnerable members as they tried to flee. Now the city was surrounded, and wherever they turned, they saw an enemy coming at them, sowing the lives of their friends and neighbors with their red-stained weapons.

Some of them were brave. They tried to fight with hammers, spades, clubs made of pieces of what used to be their furniture, anything they could put their hands on. They never stood a chance against their enemies, but they fought bravely to the last man.

She and her sisters couldn’t go further back into the city. The people retreating are were taller than them and had no qualms about pushing past them, their feet weren’t fast enough to move them away from the danger and every street had its own fight going on.

In a matter of minutes, their path was block by three large men that screamed at them in a language they didn’t know. Their younger sisters screamed and this seemed to anger the men. They grabbed them by the tunics and pulled from them until Pearl’s hand slid from the wrist she had been holding all that time.

“No!” she shouted, but one of them grabbed her by the wrist and lifted her up. She kicked in the air and squirmed, by there was no escaping that iron grip.

“No, no, please no!” she heard her sister screaming. The tallest of the man had ripped the baby from her arms and was holding him out of her reach. The child’s shrieking became louder than the din of the battle, that the collapsing of the burning buildings, than any sound in the entire world.

Pearl couldn’t stand for it. She started spewing insults and curses at them, at the top of her lungs:

“You are not men! You are rats, you’re…!”

The man that held her covered her mouth with a big, sweaty hand, the only part of his body not covered by the armor. Pearl sank her teeth into his skin and bit down. She bit down with her anger, her fear, her absolute certainty that she wasn’t going to survive this anyway.

The warrior was so surprised he let her go. As soon as her feet reached the ground, she ran towards the man holding her nephew.

His hand slapped her hard across the cheek and sent her tumbling back. Her head hit the wall with a forceful trunk and the darkness swallowed the world…

The bang woke her up.

Meg gasped for air and moved her hand to the back of her head, but the hit was just a phantom pain, the faint memory of one.

It took her a few seconds to realize the noise she had heard came from the bunker’s door.

It wasn’t the image she needed to see when there was blood and fire still plaguing her mind. Castiel hanged almost completely unconscious, with an arm slung around Dean’s neck and the other around Sam’s. They all looked pretty bloody and beaten, but at the very least Winchesters could still stand on their legs. The angel didn’t seem capable of even doing that. Half of his face was nothing but a massive bruise and his hair was damp with blood.

“What happened?” Meg asked, but the truth was, she didn’t care. She ran towards Castiel and pulled him away from the hunter. “What happened?!”

“She was… she was waiting for us…” Dean muttered and shook his head. “She did something to him…”

Meg paid no mind to him. She was too busy moving everything on the table out of the way with her telekinesis. Books and lamps flew over and scattered on the floor before she settled the angel down and frantically ripped his shirt open. There were no stab wounds or other openings that she could see, but the skin on top of his ribs was black, as if it had been burned. When she touched with the tip of her fingers, it was excessively hot and hardened.

Yet something skittered in the back of Meg’s mind. She recognized this power. It was the power where she came from, the power that was the source of her very existence.

Darkness. Chaos. Destruction.

Amara had infected him with her very essence and Castiel’s grace was violently trying to repeal it, severely damaging his body in the process. He couldn’t take it.

But she could.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked when Meg removed her jacket and pushed her sleeves up. “Meg, you’re not strong enough!”

“Well, what else are we supposed to do?” Meg asked. “It’ll agree with me better.”

“Are you sure?”

Meg didn’t have time to even ponder about that question. She held tight unto Castiel’s hand and use the other one to gently pat him in the face until his eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, Clarence, hey,” she called him. His feverish blue eyes focused on her, but Meg couldn’t be sure if they were really seeing her or not. It didn’t matter. She kept talking with the calmest voice she could conjure up, the same one she had used to coax him when he had his fits in the ward: “Listen, I’m going to take this on me now, okay? It’ll be like sucking the poison out. But you got to help me, because if I touch your grace by mistake, I’ll get burn. So you gotta try not to smite me, okay?”

His body was shaking now, so Meg didn’t know if he really nodded or not, but she fooled herself into thinking he had.

“Okay,” she muttered. “On the count of tree…”

She squeezed her hand and let the darkness of her own soul come to the surface. Her eyes went black and she used all of her power to poke at the thing extending through Castiel’s body. It pulsated, deep and hot, and for the first time in maybe centuries, Meg felt scared. This was a bit of Amara herself, something that had a piece of her twisted mind and her will, and yet it was more primitive. More aggressive.

The only comparison she could was like poking at a snake. It had its teeth sank deep in its pray and she was trying to dispute it. At first it ignored her, but the more Meg pushed and poked, the angrier it became… until finally, it set its attention on her.

“Come on,” she called it. “I’m every bit as tasty.”

The snake turned its head around and bit into her. Meg bit her lips, trying to suppress a moan of pain as the thing slithered underneath her skin, into her veins, clawing at her. When she looked down at her hand, she saw the outline of her veins in striking black against her suddenly pale skin. But instead of recoiling, Meg latched on right back. She pulled it all inside, feeling its power wrapping itself around her, like pins and needles biting her flesh. Amara’s infection invaded her body, its power wrapping itself around ever inch of her. Meg could feel it burning in her chest, itching in her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

But she was a demon. She could take it. She kept her eyes on Castiel’s body, watching as its troubling dark coloration disappeared inside of her, and even though her legs were giving out and her the beating of her borrowed heart became erratic, Meg willed herself to stay right where she was. She needed to do this. Her angel needed her to do this.

She cried out when the last of it abandoned Castiel’s skin. He remained immobile for three terrifying seconds. His lips parted and he took in a shuddering breath.

Only then Meg let go off his hands. And she let go of the shred of strength that kept her standing.

She didn’t even remember hitting the ground.

When she opened her eyes, she was covered in snow.

No, it wasn’t snow. Snow was cold and wet. The thing covering her was warm and dry, like scales on her skin. It was grey. Everything was grey and for a moment, she thought she had gone blind. But then she saw the grey scales floating in front her, dancing in the air as they fell and she realized what it was.

Ashes. She was covered in ashes and so was every inch of what had been her home.

Her body was invaded by a dull ache that made it hard to move. The back of her head hurt where she had hit it against the wall and when she tried to stand up, a searing pain shot up her legs. She lost her balance and fell face first on the street. She swallowed a bunch of dust and spent the next moments coughing violently, trying to breathe through the smoke. She blinked several times to clear her vision and looked around for something – anything – that could have survived the slaughter.

All around, there was nothing but the blackened wood columns of what used to be homes, temples, workshops or taverns. Now it was all gone.

There was a small bulge next to the spot where she was standing. She looked at it for a moment and then glanced away quickly. The bulge was covered in a blanket and the blanket was dirty, just like everything else. But the bulge underneath it was cold and unmoving and had the exact same size as her nephew.

She had to keep moving. She had to get out of that town. She shouldn’t be there.

It belonged to the spirits of the fallen now.

Her aching feet took her staggering and stumbling through the town. She saw more ashes, more smoke and more piles of charred meat and bones. She walked past them without taking a second look at them. She was afraid that despite the fire claiming their faces, she would still recognize them if she looked too closely.

She didn’t know which direction she was going, but soon the sepulchral silence was broken by the rumor of running water. Unconsciously, her steps had lead her into her beloved river.

The pier and the boats were nothing but pieces of wood dragged away by the current. She didn’t find it difficult to wade down to the river bank. The cold, clean water licked at her wounds and relieved her pain. She sank her hands in it, watching with fascination as the ashes were washed away bit by bit. It washed away her apathy. It washed away the bit of calmness and sanity holding her together.

She didn’t even think about breathing before she went to her knees and sank her face underneath the water. She screamed and screamed, drowning her sorrow where no one but the fish and the water spirits could hear her. The river took away her tears. It took away her strength. She let go and floated in the water, thinking perhaps if she did nothing for a very long time, she would eventually drown and join her sisters in the Realm of Death.

At least, that’s where she hoped they were. She hoped they were resting, forgetting about the horrors they had seen. She hoped the Southerners hadn’t taken them hostages to force them to be their slaves and their whores.

The thought made her gag. She emerged from the river’s waters, trying to catch her breath. Her tunic weighed down on her and she had lost her shoes. She couldn’t remembered if she had them when she was still in the destroyed town or if the river had taken it away. She had half walked, half swam to the middle of it, where her feet didn’t touch the bottom anymore. She kicked and waved her arms and moved through the waters, ignoring her aching muscles and her burning lungs, her heart racing so hard it felt like it might give up at any moment.

But wasn’t that what she wanted just a moment before? To sink in the cool depths of the water and let her bones rest there?

That was when she saw the woman sitting by the tree.

She knew instantly that woman wasn’t human. She was standing too still, her clothes were too red. The crow on her shoulder was too big and too black.

And she was beckoning Pearl. Not with any gestures or words. She stood by the tree, watching her pass by. The girl sank and when she emerged again, the same woman with the same tunic and the same crow was several trees ahead. Still watching. Still waiting.

So Pearl gathered every bit of strength she had left and moved towards her.

She felt the shift in the waters. How the current stopped trying to knock her down. How the sands at the bottom rose up to meet her feet so she could wade until she reached the shore, where the woman that wasn’t a woman waited for her.

She fell down to her knees once she was in front of her.

“My lady Morrigan,” she muttered, reverently.

“Stand up, child,” the goddess ordered her.

It was difficult. Her knees were trembling and her stomach was tied up in a knot. But she did as she was told and the goddess was gentle with her. She moved her hair out of her face and watched her with infinity pity in her eyes.

“You have suffered a great deal. You have seen many horrors. And yet your soul is strong.”

Pearl wanted to cry. She didn’t feel strong at all. She felt lost and scared. She felt desolated.

“Your sisters live,” the goddess continued. Pearl raised her eyes at her, tears filling them up again. “The Southerners have them, with other women of your town. They will sell them to a whorehouse in the next port. It’s a tragedy, really. The oldest is losing her sanity for the loss of her child. The youngest hasn’t even seen her first blood yet.”

“No.” Pearl shook her head. “No, it can’t be. Please, save them. You have to save them…”

“You dare tell me what I have to do?” the goddess asked. She hadn’t raised her voice and her expression hadn’t changed, but Pearl flinched nonetheless.

“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to… but if there’s anything I can do… any way that I can save them…”

Morrigan turned to her crow and looked at it intensely. It was like she was having a conversation with the bird that Pearl couldn’t possibly understand. After what felt like the longest moment of her live, Morrigan nodded and turned her attention back to her.

“I can save your sisters,” she told her. “I can assure they have a prosperous and safe life. But there’s a price you must pay.”

“Anything,” the girls said without a moment of hesitation. “Anything at all. They’re worth it. I will pay it.”

Morrigan’s thin lips curved up in a smirk, but when Pearl blinked, it had disappeared, so quickly the girl wondered if she had imagined it.

“You will have your life for a decade, to do with it as you please,” the goddess say. “You can go looking for your sisters. You can travel far away. You can marry and settle down anywhere. It will be up to you. But after those ten years are done, you will come into my Realm. And you will become one of my servants.”

Pearl swallowed. Many things were said about the goddess of death’s realm, and none of them were pleasant. But if it meant her sisters would be safe, she was willing to do it. She looked directly at the goddess’ face and nodded with decision.

The goddess stretched her long fingers and placed them on her chin. She gently pulled her closer and leaned to leave a kiss on her lips to seal their deal. Pearl didn’t close her eyes and when the goddess moved away, she saw the grin in her lips. And the way Morrigan’s eyes turned blood red.

“Very well, child. I will see you in ten years.”

And Pearl feared. She feared she made a terrible mistake trusting this being that looked like her goddess but might not have been.

It lasted a heartbeat. And when she blinked again, Morrigan was gone. She was alone and soaking wet in the middle of the woods. The night was falling and the cold was rising. She hugged herself and continued her way down a path filled with rocks and roots until she found a clearing. She leaned against a tree under the first moon of the autumn and willed herself to rest.

Her eyelids weighted a ton.

Her entire body felt like it had survived a violent assault that had drained her completely of her strength. Even thinking about moving sent a dull ache through her muscles.

But the wood’s floor wasn’t as hard as she thought. And there was light glimmering somewhere beyond what she could see. Was it morning already? It couldn’t be…

With a supreme effort, she opened her eyes. She had no idea where she was. It was a stranger’s room, illuminated by a glowing golden light. She moved her neck to the right to see a man peacefully slumbering on a chair.

It all came rushing back to her in an instant.

She must have sighed or made some movement, because Castiel immediately startled in his chair and looked at her with eyes filled with worry.

“You’re awake!” he exclaimed. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve… been better,” Meg croaked.

Her voice felt strange. Everything felt strange. That body was like a suit that was a number or two too big for her and she was still disoriented. As if she’d just returned from a long journey where she took a wrong turn somewhere.

“Of course,” Castiel said, placing a warm hand over her forehead. “Your body assimilated Amara’s infection. You… do you feel any different?”

“I feel weak,” Meg replied. She didn’t want to think about the implication of that question or the anxious way the angel’s eyes kept staring at her face. “How long was I out?”

“A couple of weeks,” Castiel informed her. “You… you talked in your sleep. And you moved a lot.”

Meg took a deep breath. Her newly recovered memories were still rattling in the back of her mind and she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about them right then.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Castiel asked, moving from his chair to the bed to watch her closely. “Do you need me to bring you water? Something to eat…?”

“You could stop fussing over me like a mother hen,” Meg snapped at him. Castiel went quiet and retreated a little, but as much as Meg wanted to scold him for this being his fault in the first place, she decided she needed to save her energy for later. “Can you just… get in here and hold me?”

“Of course.”

He kicked off his shoes and climbed into the bed with her. Meg closed her eyes as she sank her face into his chest. She breathed in the clean smell of ozone he gave out.

And only then she started feeling a little more at home.

 

* * *

 

She told him the full story, of course. After she slept for two more days, mercifully without dreams or dreams she couldn’t remember. Castiel held her the whole way through, petting her hair and squeezing her hand, patiently waiting for her to continue when emotions overwhelmed her too much.

“I don’t remember the ten years that followed,” she concluded. “But I guess there must have been… less than stellar.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I already knew I was going to ‘Morrigan’s realm’,” Meg pointed out, drawing air quotes with her fingers. “So maybe I just indulged in whatever the hell I wanted, you know?”

“Or maybe you found your sisters,” Castiel said. “Maybe the four of you had a good life together.”

Meg huffed, skeptical.

“Why do you need me to be a good person so bad?”

“Why do you need to think you were a bad person?”

Damn the angel and his difficult questions. Meg avoided his eyes for a moment, which was hard to do when he was on the bed with him and holding her tight.

“I don’t know. I just assumed I was. All these years, I imagined I had committed some sort of sin, something that made me deserving of going to hell. I didn’t imagine… that.”

“You sacrificed yourself for someone you loved,” Castiel pointed out. “I would say, coming from you, that’s not out of character, as recent events show.”

Meg didn’t even try to contradict him. In any other occasion, she would’ve fought him on the notion of her loving him, but she must have been still too weak, because she couldn’t find the energy for it.

“And what good did it really do?” she asked instead. “They probably died anyway in another raid or something. They were probably forced to convert to Christianity or got burned if they refused.”

“Or maybe you spared them their suffering. Maybe you gave them the chance to have a good life,” Castiel insisted.

“We’re going in circles,” Meg protested, too tired of that conversation to keep it going. “I guess we’ll never know. It doesn’t matter. But I think it’s safe to say that was the worst birthday ever, huh?”

Castiel didn’t laugh at her joke. Not that she was expecting him to.

“You really think your life didn’t matter?” he asked. “That it wouldn’t have made a difference if you had died and never saved your sisters?”

“I think if you’re going to keep yapping, you might as well put your mouth to better uses,” she interrupted him. “It really doesn’t matter, Castiel. I know my existence is just secondary in the grand scheme of things. I’ve always known that.”

For once, Castiel let her have the last word. But by the way he hugged her close to his chest, she should have known the conversation was far from over.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t by her side when she woke up the next day. Which wasn’t entirely unusual. He and the Winchesters still needed to deal with this ancient unspeakable evil they had set loose and just because their first attempt had been a complete failure, it didn’t mean suddenly they had grown an extra brain and decided to start acting intelligently.

What was unusual, though, was seeing so many colors in the kitchen.

Meg stood on the doorway, looking at the paper garlands and the balloons tied in a corner. Slowly, she turned to the Winchesters in search of an explanation. Sam was smiling at it all, slightly amused while Dean remained, as usual grumpily uncooperative.

“Don’t look at us,” he said. “It was the angel’s idea.”

“Really?” Meg asked.

Castiel was standing a little behind the brothers, but finally, as if his name had been called, he took a step forwards, with the hands behind his back, and cleared his throat.

“It’s the first day of autumn,” he announced.

“Oh.” Meg cringed. “You didn’t have to…”

“Meg, I know you think your life is insignificant. I know you think gestures like this are meaningless,” Castiel continued, as if she hadn’t say a word. “But they are not. They are in fact, what remind us of the meaning of it all. Your life is meaningful to us,” he continued, putting his hands forwards to show what he had been hiding: a small cupcake with purple frosting and a single candle burning in the middle of it. He stepped closer to Meg as he continued: “We are happy you exist. We’re happy you took the steps to end here and we’re happy to have you. I, especially, am happy to have you.” He grinned and extended the cupcake at her. “So happy birthday, Meg.”

“You’re a complete sap, did you know that?” Meg asked him. She was trying with all her might not to smile. She was also failing spectacularly.

“You keep reminding me,” Castiel replied, almost waving the cupcake in front of her now. “Don’t forget to make a wish.”

Meg chuckled and blew the candle out.


End file.
